Re: websites: public vs private information?

Dodi, I just love to disagree with you, but I'll try to confine myself to what is 'substantially real."

On 06/12/2000, Dodi Schultz <schultz[_at_]compuserve.com> wrote:
>
> On Sun, 11 Jun 2000, Ransford Pyle <pyle[_at_]mail.ucf.edu> wrote:
> >
> > "Substantially real" -- I like that -- that covers what I mean by
> > scribbling notes and a thought at lunch with a colleague -- real,
> > yes, but perhaps insubstantial.
>
> That phrase, snipped from the dictionary definition of "tangible"
> I provided, was not meant philosophically but literally. As in
> physical existence. Your notes may be deemed slight in content,
> by you or by others, but if they are scribbled (on paper, I assume),
> they have been fixed in a tangible medium. Whether or not they
> qualify, by their nature, for copyright protection is a different
> question.

"substantial(ly)" is used a good bit in the law, but always with the awareness that it is difficult to measure.

> > If jazz musicians regularly perform via improvisation, are [their]
> > performances protected by copyright? I suspect most courts would
> > say yes.
>
> I suspect most courts would not find anything to be either protected
> or potentially infringed if there were no record of the performance
> except in someone's memory.

Without some sort of record, infringement is surely unlikely because copying is unlikely. If, however a musician listens and remembers and then repeats the improvisation as his own in his own performance, I think he has copied and I think he has infringed because I think the initial performance was 'fixed.'

> > I consider the music tangible and surely it is as 'fixed' as the
> > first outline of written work.
>
> C'mon, Ran. It simply isn't, unless it was in some manner recorded
> in a tangible medium. Tangible: you can touch it and/or hold it in
> your hand; it has physical substance.

Sound has physical substance although difficult to touch, and by some definitions intangible.

> > I fear drawing the line between 'making' and 'creating' is obscure.
>
> The courts do not think so. Many important cases have hinged on that
> distinction. I could make, and publish, a list of all the people who
> live on my block, with their addresses and telephone numbers; many
> people would find it useful and might even pay for a copy. I assure
> you that no court would deem it a creative expression or worthy of
> copyright protection.

You live on a better block than I do. I think you're too Feisty here.

Ransford Pyle
<pyle[_at_]mail.ucf.edu> Received on Tue Jun 13 2000 - 23:11:09 GMT